A flatbed cutter assembly is known in the art. Such a known cutter assembly comprises a medium support table on which a recording medium may be arranged. Such a cutter assembly is particular advantageous for cutting large rigid media. Such rigid media are, for example, used in the graphics arts for printing signs, banners, posters, bill boards, bear coasters, awards, etc.
A gantry is provided such that the gantry is moveable over the medium support table and a carriage is moveably supported by the gantry such that the carriage is moveable over the medium support table in a direction perpendicular to the direction of movement of the gantry. By suitably controlling a movement of the gantry and the carriage, a cutter such as a kiss cut tool or another type of cutter is enabled to cut a piece out of the rigid media which acts as a jig, according to a cut path. The cut path may be an outline of an image intended to be printed on the rigid media. The cut path may be located inside an image intended to be printed on the rigid media. A cutting depth may be specified by a tool down position with respect to a belt of the cutter.
The rigid media may be printed on by means of a printing device. When one or both sides of the rigid media comprise a printed image consisting of a marking material like ink or toner and afterwards the printed rigid media is cut by a flatbed cutter assembly, printed marking material may chip off a printed side during cutting.
By first cutting the rigid media and printing the images on both sides, this problem may be avoided, but another problem arises of aligning the front and back printed images and aligning is time consuming especially when a plurality of media pieces have to be aligned.
Also known is to cut the rigid media along a cut path using bridges in the cut path. A bridge is a part of the cut path which is not cut out but the recording medium at a location of the bridge remains intact. The use of bridges will hold front and back images together so that alignment of the front and back images is easily made.
However, by using bridges printed marking material on the printed sides of the recording medium will chip near the bridges when the piece of recording medium is extracted from the jig.
It is desirable to have a flatbed cutter assembly that is enabled and configured to cut rigid media, while making it easy to align a front and back image to be printed on the rigid media and avoiding chipping off of marking material once printed on the rigid media.